The postwar Polish republic, renamed in 1952 the Polish People’s Republic, occupied an area some 20 percent smaller than prewar Poland, and its population of almost 30 million rose to nearly 39 million in the following four decades. The Holocaust, together with the expulsion of several million Germans and population transfers with the U.S.S.R., left Poland virtually homogeneous in its ethnic composition. The expulsion of the Germans was approved by the Potsdam Conference, but the final decision regarding the new German-Polish border along the Oder-Neisse Line was left to a future peace conference. The U.S.S.R. cleverly capitalized on its status as the sole guarantor of this border, which gave Poland a long seacoast, with such harbours as Szczecin and Gdańsk, and such natural resources as coal and zinc in Silesia.

Poland, 1945Poland's territory following World War II.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Despite the potential for wealth established by the redrawn borders, the fact remained that the war had devastated Poland. Warsaw, Wrocław, and Gdańsk lay in ruins, and social conditions bordered on chaos. Huge migrations, mainly to the ex-German “western territories,” added to the instability. Fighting against the remnants of the Ukrainian Liberation Army was followed by the mass relocation of the Ukrainians (Operation Vistula) in 1947. Persecutions of the AK and political opponents (the National Party was outlawed) by the communists led to armed clashes that continued for several years. It was under these conditions that a Jewish pogrom occurred in Kielce in June 1946, claiming more than 40 lives.

Bierut, who was formally nonpartisan but in fact was an old communist, assumed the presidency. In a cabinet headed by a socialist and dominated by communists and fellow travelers, Mikołajczyk became deputy prime minister. He successfully re-created a genuine Polish Peasant Party (PSL; Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe, later also called the Polish People’s Party), which was larger than the PPR and its socialist and democratic satellite parties (the PPS and the SD, respectively). Supported by all enemies of communism, Mikołajczyk sought to challenge the PPR in the “free and unfettered” elections stipulated by the Yalta accords. His opponents included the ruthless secretary-general of the PPR, Władysław Gomułka, a “home communist,” and the men in charge of security (Jakub Berman) and of the economy (Hilary Minc), who had returned from Russia.

The Sovietization of Poland, accompanied by terror, included the nationalization of industry and the expropriation of privately owned land parcels larger than 125 acres (50 hectares). Yet in some areas (namely, matters concerning the church and foreign policy), the communists trod lightly during this transition period. The test of strength between Mikołajczyk and the PPR first occurred during the referendum of 1946—the results of which, favourable to Mikołajczyk, were falsified—and then in the general elections of 1947, which were hardly “free and unfettered.” Mikołajczyk, fearing for his life, fled the country. The victorious communists completed their monopoly of power in 1948 by absorbing the increasingly dependent PPS to become the Polish United Workers’ Party (PUWP).

Over the next few years the Bierut regime in Poland closely followed the Stalinist model in politics (adopting the Soviet-style 1952 constitution), economics (emphasizing heavy industry and collectivization of agriculture), military affairs (appointing the Soviet Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky as commander of Polish forces and adhering to the Warsaw Pact of 1955), foreign policy (joining the Communist Information Bureau, the agency of international communism), culture, and the rule of the secret police. Political terror in Poland, however, did not include, as elsewhere, show trials of fallen party leaders—Gomułka, denounced as a “Titoist” and imprisoned in 1951, was spared such a trial. Moreover, the primate of Poland, Stefan Wyszyński, could still negotiate a modus vivendi in 1950, though, as the pressure on the church increased, he was arrested in September 1953 (by which time he had been named a cardinal).

Stefan Wyszyński.UPI—Bettmann/Corbis

The death of Stalin in March 1953 opened a period of struggle for succession and change in the U.S.S.R. that had repercussions throughout the Soviet bloc. The interlude of liberalization that followed culminated in the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalinism at the 20th Party Congress in February 1956. With the sudden death of Bierut, anti-Stalinists in Poland raised their heads; a violently suppressed workers’ strike in Poznań in June 1956 shook the whole country. Gomułka, who believed in a “Polish road to socialism,” became a candidate for the leadership of the party. What appeared as his confrontation with Khrushchev and other top Soviet leaders who descended on Warsaw in October and threatened intervention made Gomułka popular throughout Poland. In reality the Polish leader convinced Khrushchev of his devotion to communism and of the need for a reformist approach to strengthen its doctrine.

Important changes followed, among them Polish-Soviet accords on trade and military cooperation (Rokossovsky and most Soviet officers left the country), a significant reduction of political terror, an end to forced collectivization, the release of Cardinal Wyszyński (followed by some concessions in the religious sphere), and increased contacts with the West, including freer travel. Gomułka’s objective, however, was to bridge the gap between the people and the party, thereby legitimizing the latter. Hence, the period of reform known as “Polish October” did not prove to be the beginning of an evolution of communism that revisionists at home and politically motivated émigrés had hoped for.

Within a decade economic reform slowed down, the activity of the church was circumscribed, and intellectuals were subjected to pressures. Demonstrations by students in favour of intellectual freedom led to reprisals in March 1968 that brought to an end the so-called “little stabilization” that Gomułka had succeeded in achieving. Ever more autocratic in his behaviour, Gomułka became involved in an “anti-Zionist” campaign that resulted in purges within the party, administration, and army. Thousands of people of Jewish origin emigrated.

Also in 1968, Polish troops joined the Soviet-led intervention in Czechoslovakia. In 1970 Gomułka registered a foreign-policy success by signing a treaty with West Germany that involved a recognition of the Oder-Neisse border. In December 1970, however, major strikes in the shipyards at Gdańsk, Gdynia, and Szczecin, provoked by price increases, led to bloody clashes with police and troops in which many were killed. Gomułka had to step down and was replaced as first secretary by the more pragmatic head of the party in Silesia, Edward Gierek.

The Gierek decade (1970–80) began with ambitious attempts to modernize the country’s economy and raise living standards. Exploiting East-West détente, he attracted large foreign loans and investments. Initial successes, however, turned sour as the world oil crisis and mismanagement of the economy produced huge budget deficits, which Gierek tried to cover through increased borrowing. The policy of consumerism failed to strengthen the system, and new price increases in 1976 led to workers’ riots in Ursus and Radom, which once again were brutally suppressed.

A Workers’ Defense Committee (KOR) arose and sought to bridge the gap between the intelligentsia, which had been isolated in 1968, and the workers, who had received no support in 1970. The names of such dissidents as Jacek Kuroń and Adam Michnik became internationally known. Other committees appeared that claimed the legality of their activity and protested reprisals as being contrary to the 1975 Helsinki Accords. The PUWP responded with measures of selective intimidation.

In 1978 the election of Karol Cardinal Wojtyła, the archbishop of Kraków, as Pope John Paul II gave the Poles a father figure and a new inspiration. The coalition of workers and intellectuals, operating largely under the protective umbrella of the church, was in fact building a civil society. The pope’s visit to Poland in 1979 endowed that society with national, patriotic, and ethical dimensions. A strike at the Gdańsk shipyard led by a charismatic electrician, Lech Wałęsa, forced an accord with the government on August 31, 1980. Out of the strike emerged the almost 10-million-strong Independent Self-Governing Trade Union Solidarity (Solidarność), which the government was forced to recognize. Here was an unprecedented working-class revolution directed against a “socialist” state, an example to other peoples of the Soviet bloc.

John Paul II, 1979.Lochon-Francolon-Simon/Gamma Liaison

SolidarityPolish labour activist Lech Wałęsa representing the trade union Solidarity shortly before it was suppressed by the communist government of Poland in December 1981. Film narrated by an American commentator with an anticommunist viewpoint speculating on the role that Solidarity might play in Poland's future.Stock footage courtesy The WPA Film Library

A huge movement that sought not to govern but rather to ensure freedom through a “self-limiting revolution,” Solidarity could not have been homogeneous. The opponents of communism ranged from those who opposed the system as contrary to liberty and democracy to those who saw it as inimical to national and Christian values and to those who felt that it had not lived up to its socioeconomic promises. These three attitudes all resurfaced after the fall of communism and explain a good deal about the developments in Poland of the 1990s.

Gierek did not politically survive the birth of Solidarity, and he was replaced by Stanisław Kania, who was followed by General Wojciech Jaruzelski. By the autumn of 1981, Jaruzelski held the offices of premier, first secretary of the party, and commander in chief. His decision to attempt to break Solidarity through the introduction of martial law in December 1981 may well have stemmed from a conviction that the constant tug of war between Solidarity and the government was leading the country toward anarchy, which had to be ended by Polish or by Soviet hands. It is likely that he could not conceive of any Poland except a communist one.

Martial law effectively broke Solidarity by paralyzing the country and imprisoning virtually all of the movement’s leadership, Wałęsa included. It did not, however, destroy the movement. After the lifting of martial law in 1983, the government, despite its best attempts, could not establish its legitimacy. Severe economic problems worsened the political deadlock. In 1984 a popular priest, Jerzy Popieluszko, was murdered by the secret police, but, for the first time in such a case, state agents were arrested and charged with the crime.

In 1985 when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power as the leader of the Soviet Union, his policies of reform (glasnost and perestroika) started a process that eventually led to the collapse of communism in eastern Europe and the disintegration of the U.S.S.R. The Jaruzelski regime realized that broad reforms were unavoidable and that a revived Solidarity had to be part of them. The roundtable negotiations under the auspices of the church—Józef Cardinal Glemp succeeded Wyszyński as primate—resulted in a “negotiated revolution.” Solidarity was restored and participated in partly free elections in June 1989 that brought it a sweeping victory.

Transitioning from communism

Detaching the satellite (populist and democratic) parties from the PUWP, Wałęsa negotiated a compromise by virtue of which Jaruzelski was elected president, while Wałęsa’s adviser, the noted Catholic politician Tadeusz Mazowiecki, became premier. This was the first government led by a noncommunist since World War II. The tasks it faced were immense. In 1990 the government adopted a “shock therapy” program of economic reform, named the Balcerowicz Plan after its author, Finance Minister Leszek Balcerowicz. It was meant to arrest Poland’s financial and structural crisis and rapidly convert the communist economic model into a free-market system, thereby reintegrating Poland into the global economy. Although it proved a success, the social cost was high. The difficulties of redirecting trade previously linked to the Soviet bloc were great. The new government achieved, however, two major successes: a formal recognition of the Oder-Neisse border by the reunited Germany and, after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991, the evacuation of Soviet troops from the country in 1992.

By the mid-1990s the Polish economy—more than half of which had been privatized—was making important strides, including significant reductions in the annual inflation rate and the budget deficit. Moreover, the annual growth rate of Poland’s gross national product was the highest in Europe. But progress was uneven geographically, and economic sectors such as the coal-mining and building industries experienced slumps. The gap between the rich and the poor grew, adding to the bitterness and frustration reflected in a political life that was far less stable than expected.

The disintegration of Solidarity, accelerated by political and personality clashes, became apparent in the 1990 election, in which Wałęsa defeated Mazowiecki for the presidency. Voters expressed their dissatisfaction by supporting the dark-horse candidate Stanisław Tyminski, a Polish émigré businessman from Canada who finished second in the balloting. The succession of cabinets in the early 1990s included one government headed by Jan Olszewski, which fell as a result of a clumsy attempt to produce a list of former high-ranking communist collaborators, and another led by Poland’s first woman prime minister, Hanna Suchocka, which was unexpectedly defeated by a somewhat frivolous no-confidence vote. The centrist Freedom Union (UW), which bore the brunt of the transition to democracy, failed to communicate its vision to the masses and remained largely a party of the intelligentsia. The rightists, split into several groups, accused Wałęsa and the roundtable negotiators of selling out to communists.

Meanwhile, the communists were able to profit financially from the collapse of the economy and reorganized as the Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland (SdRP). Indeed, the SdRP exploited the increased frustration over the inequalities of a capitalist economy and the political infighting of the Solidarity camp. In 1991 the SdRP formed a coalition with the All Poland Trade Unions Alliance (OPZZ) under the banner of the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD). Well-organized and disciplined, the coalition, along with the Polish Peasant Party (PSL), captured the most seats in the 1993 legislative election, and the two formed a coalition government. In November 1995 the SLD captured the presidency when Wałęsa was defeated by the young, dynamic former communist Aleksander Kwaśniewski, whose campaign asked voters to look to the future rather than to the past. His election may have been symptomatic of a generational change that was also visible in the attitude toward the church, whose high prestige suffered as its efforts to influence politics and to be a national rallying point in the increasingly secularized postcommunist society occasionally backfired.

After the 1993 legislative election, the SLD-PSL coalition governments—under the premiership of Waldemar Pawlak (PSL, 1993–95), Józef Oleksy (SLD, 1995–96), and Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz (SLD, 1996–97)—continued, albeit cautiously, the pro-market policies of their predecessors. They failed, however, to reform the obsolete structures of the welfare state that had been inherited from the communist regime and were inadequate in the context of a market economy.